John Henry Comstock

Comstock was born on February 24, 1849 in Janesville, Wisconsin. He studied at Cornell University, graduating in 1874. He also studied at Yale University and the University of Leipzig. In 1878 he married Anna Botsford. She was a wood engraver who beautifully illustrated many of his articles. Comstock became a professor of Nature Studies at Cornell.

Anna Botsford Comstock

Comstock worked as an instructor at Cornell until 1879. He worked at Vassar College from 1877 to 1879. Between 1879 and 1881 he became the chief Entomologist of the USDA in Washington, D.C. In 1882 he became professor of Entomology and Invertebrate Zoology at Cornell. He also did work in insect morphology and is best known as the co-proposer of the Comstock-Needham system with James George Needham. In 1893, John Henry Comstock and Simon Henry Gage founded the Comstock Publishing Company in order to make textbooks on microscopy, histology, and entomology available at a reasonable price to students and to publish the works of Anna Botsford Comstock on nature study.

Comstock, through his own work and that of his students, had a significant influence in the development of entomology departments throughout the United States.

He suffered a stroke on August 5, 1926, and continued to live as an invalid until his death on March 20, 1931.

A student fund book plate from Cornell University's Comstock Memorial Library in 1915

The Entomological Society of America gives out an award in each of its six branches to the outstanding graduate student of the year. This award is the John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award.

Comstock published many articles including:

• Introduction to Entomology (1908).
• A Manual for the study of insects (1930) jointly credited and illustrated by Anna Botsford Comstock.
• The Spider book: a manual for the study of the spiders and near relatives (1912).
• Notes on Entomology (Ithaca, 1875).
• Annual Reports of Entomologist (Washington, 1879–1881).
• Report on Cotton Insects (1879).
• Second Annual Report of the Department of Entomology of Cornell University, including a monograph on Diaspinae (Ithaca, 1883).
• an article on Hymenoptera in the "Standard Natural History" (Boston, 1884).

• Idiogramma comstockii

• Gage, Simon Henry (1914). "Retirement of Professor John Henry Comstock". The Cornell Countryman: 227–229.

About Henry and Anna:

• "Anna Botsford Comstock," "John Henry Comstock," "Harrison Gray Dyar," "Mary Jane Rathbun," and "Robert Edwards Carter Stearns." In: American National Biography. New York: (Oxford University Press, 1999).

• Media related to John Henry Comstock at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to A manual for the study of insects at Wikimedia Commons
• The John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award
• List of winners of the Comstock Award
• The correspondence of John Henry and Anna Botsford Comstock in the Cornell Library
• Correspondence with Charles Darwin
• Letter to Darwin
• Cover of "A Manual ..." with an engraving by Anna Botsford Comstock
• Article mentioning John and Anna as early married professors
• Works by or about John Henry Comstock at Internet Archive